


The Brightest Light in the Room

by wilkiecollins



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-07-25 17:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7540708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilkiecollins/pseuds/wilkiecollins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Philippe returns from the war with a scrambled gut and a scrambled brain. While the feathers and gold thread remain on the surface his mind has descended into screams and fireworks. Philippe seeks answers to his sleepless nights and frequent terrors, and desperately tries to confess his pain to his wife and brother amidst the suffocation of life in Versailles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Anatomy

Philippe did not recognise himself as he pulled the hood close around his head, shadowing his face. His hair was pulled back and tied up, and his clothes were drab - rags Rohan had collected for him. Philippe had realised the use in being so utterly vain - all he had to do was dress badly to disguise himself.

"Are you sure about this, Monsieur?" Rohan whispered from his side, though even the most tumultuous screams would not be heard from his chambers above his brother's raucous gathering.

"No," he replied, with a small smile, before turning on his heel and walking towards the doors. "Are you coming?" he asked, throwing a glance over his shoulder, and he saw the hesitation in Rohan's steps towards him, in his curt nod of acknowledgement. He could hear the throb of fear pulsing in Rohan's throat as he lead him from his brother's palace, to the horses tied up outside. Rohan glanced at him again as they pulled the reigns, his face contorted into another unspoken 'are you _sure_ ', and Philippe pulled ahead quickly in assent.

Their bodies were drenched from the evening's warm, spitting rain by the time they arrived at the rotting double doors, and Claudine's faced peered out, half illuminated by sputtering candlelight. She hushed them in quickly, all but slamming the door behind them, staring at Rohan with wide, worried eyes, betraying the automatic curtsy she bestowed upon the Monsieur.

"I made him bring me," Philippe said by way of explanation, impressive words for a man who rarely sought to explain himself, but he longed for Claudine's cooperation, her secrecy, and her expertise.

Claudine nodded, but the concern never edged from her glowing grey gaze. She took his sodden cloak and placed it near the fire, before wordlessly leading him through the rows and rows of stinking, bandaged men.

"There may be a miasma, vapours -"

"Rohan explained," Philippe interjected in a murmur, feeling these men needn't hear more about their vapours. He had been exposed to their vapours before. To the stench of men's bodies bathed in the stagnant water of the trenches, and he knew the smell of their breath as their insides rotted from home-brew liquor and fear. He knew what a man smelled like as he pissed himself on the front line. He understood the scent of a fresh corpse as its bowels evacuated, and remembered how he had marvelled - he had never read about that in books. The tales of the vivid glory of war never spoke about the smells of gangrenous flesh falling away from bone, or the particular metallic scent of a decapitated man's blood atomising across one's face. They were generally murky on those details, favouring victory and exhilaration and blood pounding within intact veins. Where was the history of stink? The tracts on the foul odours of war time, that he could use to explain why he bathed himself in perfume, bottles of it a day, brought in from Paris, a precious liquid bounty that soaked his clothes, smeared across his skin, as though somehow he could absorb it into himself, and sweeten the darkness that lurked within. A little something to overpower his own rot.

He walked quietly past the men, not wanting to wake them, though few slept, and those who did slept fitfully, more drowning in their own incomprehensible suffering than resting. The ones with open eyes - the ones with eyes left at all - he knelt before them, and kissed the knuckles of their grey, shrunken hands with a reverence he could not promise himself he would show his own brother. He whispered "your country thanks you" into their sore, cracking skin, and spent longer with the ones coherent enough to process his words and coalesce their own. He answered their questions as best he could, and shared in their memories. It was like a secret language between them, just the names of battlefields and regiments, a broken code that conveyed the intensity of a shared experience. He knelt besides one man and tears began pouring down the wounded soldier's filthy face, carving tracks in the dirt. They did not say a word to each other, the shared memory between them like a golden thread between their hearts. Except Philippe's shoes were worth more money than any of these men would ever see in a lifetime, all of them put together, and Philippe's brother could change this all. Yet in this midnight moment, as he crouched in the muck and whispered soothing promises to his brothers in arms, he felt the exceptions and distinctions dissipating, and felt their pain throb in his own skull.

He was exhausted and pale by the time Claudine sat him before the fire, and poured him a strong brandy. "It's for the wounds. The surgeries. Amputations," she said softly, justifying the bottle in her hand, though Philippe thought a woman who saw these horrors daily should be able to drink all the brandy in France without judgement. Rohan was readying the horses, and his fingers trembled around his glass.

"Morale is important," she said after a moment of, for her, silence, and for Philippe, the relentless screaming of the voices in his mind. "You feel like you are not doing much, but strong spirit makes a strong body. It helps them heal."

A wry smile tugged at Philippe's lips, "But only so far, I imagine. How many of those men will be alive next week?" he asked, and Claudine cast her gaze to the ground. Philippe suddenly remembered something his mother had said of his father when he was small - "we can only make him comfortable now". These men laying in their own muck did not look comforted. Comfort was a privilege rather than a right, even for the dying.

"And even if they live," he swallowed, staring hard at her shadowed face. "Even if they walk, talk, work - how many of their spirits will have died long ago? How many of their minds will rot from disease, even as their bodies recover?" he asked, wondering if in all her experience of humanity she recognised the crack in his voice.

A gesture of her hand asked if she could sit, and he assented with a nod. His hands were caked in blood and vomit and dirt and, in the presence of the woman keeping his men alive, he felt no right to superiority.

"The mind is a part of the body," she said, matter of fact, like a teacher, and Philippe had always been amazed that she talked like a book, and wondered if that was why Louis had liked her so much. Books did not rebel like people did. "Like the body it can sicken, but like the body it can heal. Given time." She tried to catch his eyes, his face lowered towards the warmth of the fire. "But it needs time. The wounds of war go beyond that which are seen."

Philippe threw the brandy down his throat in one thick gulp. He thought he had come to soothe his soul with pity for the men, to bathe in the righteous balm of charity - yet as he left, back into the pouring rain, he knew what he was really pursuing was the validation of the medical woman. He needed to hear her say it, to make it fact. He wanted some part of the screaming of his mind, the terror of his nightmares, and the constant clamminess of his crawling skin to be recognised and sketched out in one of her books. Yet he knew the brandy would be a better aid than all the professional validation in France. He was changed, and no number of her potions or ointments would recreate the Philippe he had left behind.


	2. Stock Phrases

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe seeks solace from his terrors in considering the infant about to be born into the halls of Versailles.

They stood on the fringes of one of Louis's famous gatherings, their voices hushed between them amongst the cries of the throng. The light was golden and the wine ran freely, and Philippe's head hurt and his heart was pounding slightly too quickly.

"You used to be the brightest light in the room," Louis whispered to his brother, and Philippe flinched. He had heard those words before, reported from Henriette's lips. Philippe wondered whether Louis deigned to treat all his accoutrements in a standardised fashion; whether he had a set of templates, stock phrases to regurgitate, to placate his most favoured marionettes. 

"Am I not even deserving of original insults?" he asked, eyes narrowed, and Louis's lips twitched.

"The most scathing thing you have said in weeks."

"I admit I haven't been on top form."

"France is lesser for it," Louis replied dryly, his smile spreading as he cupped a hand at the back of his brother's neck, under the fountain of dark hair. "Philippe," he said softly, pressing his thumb against the soft spot beneath the Duke's ear. "Versailles is lesser. _I_ am lesser."

Philippe feigned a gasp, though kept his eyes fixed, steady, burning on his brother's, a hardness contrary to the way he softly, almost imperceptibly leaned into the fraternal touch, "Can't have that. You may drop from transcendent to simply magnificent at any point."

Louis squeezed him, his grin showing teeth. "More of this. Yes."

"I cannot make - I cannot make promises," Philippe said, softer, his eyes flickering to the floor, staring at his gloriously expensive shoes. "I'm not entirely sure what is happening to me," he admitted, the words pouring off his chest, removing some of the pressure he had been drowning in, the freedom of simple honesty holding with it an almost religious sense of confession and catharsis. But the confession fell on dead ears. In that moment Henriette had appeared, and his brother's eyes were no longer his own, and his hand dropped from his neck. Philippe missed the warmth of his listening ear more than he missed the warmth of his touch, and it felt as though the confession rushed back in through his parted lips and poured down his throat, where it re-situated itself in the nest it had forged behind his ribs. A hot shame accompanied the return of the repressed anxiety, and Philippe exhaled quickly, sharply, averting his gaze as his brother kissed the hand of his wife, and their child grew on within her.

'The child was a symbol of doubt' Louis would repeat, a soundbite to drop into every conversation, every row, every whispered mention of the royal child. Another of his stock phrases that reeked of laziness, where otherwise Louis's mind and tongue were so utterly overactive, so entirely expressive, a hub of innovation. That made it hurt all the more when a silver tongue turned to lead in one's presence out of sheer, monstrous apathy. Louis did not even care enough to wonder with them over the phenomenon sprouting within Henriette. All the more tragic as Philippe had hoped, mildly, after the initial explosion of visceral fury, that perhaps the situation could be, if not remedied, then embraced. 

The child was a symbol of doubt, yes, but not just doubt about the authority of the King and his line, but doubt over the very nature of what was possible. Maybe the child could become a symbol of something else. Their blood poured in its veins and the indistinguishable nature of its parentage blurred the delineations, between brothers, between husband and lover, King and Duke. Louis was so much more than him, Louis was the King of the world, yet in the battlefield of contraception their seed was equally likely to have created a child. In that way, it belonged to them all. Not in the sense of the children of France, a term Louis recycled to defer responsibility, to essentially render his own offspring the property of the state, but in a more personal, individual spirit - this child was Henriette's, and Louis's, and Philippe's. And though his mind was clouded with the foggy darkness of blood-soaked war, somehow he thought that there was a small fragment of brightness growing within his wife. Perhaps, in this brave new world, where hunting lodges became palaces, the thing that should tear them asunder would unify them. Because as terror gripped him in fits and spasms, he needed them both.

\--

The pregnancy drained Henriette. Philippe would wake her in the morning, when her skin was still warm from sleep, with bowls of fresh strawberries. 

"Are you trying to sweeten me?" she would ask, her smile drowsy and her eyes like melting chocolate fondant. 

"Sweet enough," he would always say, and the words were always the same, their own stock phrases, but infused with habit and tender familiarity, rather than laziness and neglect. It was their version of good morning. Their place together was not between the sheets, but on top of them. Many a night and many a morning was spent sprawled on Henriette's bed, their stockings removed, her hair down, exchanging light titbits of gossip, or memories of their youth. Henriette had been in his life for as long as he could recall. As long as he had known himself he had known her lilting voice. She was as much a part of him as his brother, in so many respects. In some ways she was lesser, and in some ways she was more.

The sickness made eating difficult, but he would kick her entourage of maids from the room and hold her hair himself, rubbing her back, and chiding her when she apologised. Even sick and exhausted with the strain of creating new life she would apologise that he would have to see her like that.

"Do you remember when you were nine and you ate so many macaroons that you vomited them out of your nose?" he'd remind her, and she'd laugh through the hot tears and bile burning her throat.

In these moments he could almost pretend that the child was wholly theirs. Or even pretend that they were not married, simply the closest friends, steadfast by each other's sides through choice rather than royal decree. And the thought of an infant's screams, and its tiny kicks against his hand as he curled his fingers over her skirts, almost drowned out the crack of fireworks inside his skull, and the taste of blood forever in his mouth.

"I will teach him to ride a horse," he said, and Henriette laughed her bird-like laugh, her eyebrows raising.

"Him? I will be having a princess of France!" she insisted, and it was Philippe's turn to quirk a brow.

"When have such delineations ever mattered to me, my love? They will ride horses and wear dresses and wield swords regardless!"

Henriette would slap his arm, "You are not going to make my child like you," she said, but soft and teasing in a way she could only manage. Philippe was a picture of melodramatic betrayal.

"It hasn't done me too badly, has it?" he smiled, popping a strawberry in his mouth.

But these mornings always ended in the same way, with the sound of Louis's heels clicking on the floors of the corridor, and the breeze of the double doors of Henriette's apartment being flung open.

"Some privacy, brother," Louis would insist, regally, because lately that seemed to be the only tone he had at his disposal.

Philippe and Henriette would glance at each other, knowing, and Philippe would take the strawberries with him, just to be spiteful.

Philippe wondered if it ever entered his brother's mind that privacy was a futile concept once you shared a bed, a wife, and a child. Ever since Henriette had spewed macaroons from her nose she had been telling Philippe every private moment passed with the King. Philippe gave himself these moments, walking away from Henriette's chambers, to indulge the doubt of the impossible. To doubt the rules that governed his life, the laws he had to live by. When your brother created the rules, surely there was doubt. Surely there was another way to move forward. As full-scale wars played out in his imagination every single night, and he would remember the sound of cracking bones and the smell of blood soaked earth after rain, the issues of patrilineal inheritance seemed rather small in comparison. If he could claim territories with a feather in his collar then by the Lord, he would make this child the most beloved creature despite the bickering of its three parents.


	3. Pygmalion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe's moods are swinging rapidly, scaring everyone around him, and terrifying himself.

There are moments when Philippe thought everything would be okay. Glorious moments that he can only possibly comprehend as the lifting of a veil. He spread a blanket out on the grass by the orangery, and listened to his brother talk to Jacques. While he did not participate, hearing someone else talk of war soothed him, as though he were a child hearing nursery rhymes. He folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes against the bright Autumn sun and allowed himself to be lulled by their voices. In these moments he felt like Philippe, the old version, the one he thought he had left on the battlefield to rot with the scattered limbs of his countrymen. He felt as though he were reclaimed, reworked, and refreshed, and wondered how he could possibly have ever felt otherwise. These were moments of a soaring, surging relief, as what was broken appeared to fix itself organically. Claudine had said it would take time, and he had given it time, and now he would re-emerge from the ashes of his crumbled consciousness more fiery and beautiful than ever; he was sure of it.

Philippe sighed, and it was like lead leaving his lungs. He felt the blanket shift as his brother sat beside him, but he kept his eyes shut, seeing the shadow of Louis's movement block the sun from his eyes and feeling the warmth radiate from him so strongly he could almost make out his shape, his very position, navigating by the feel of him.

"You're smiling," Louis said softly, and he felt the pad of a thumb pressing to his lower lip, warm and ever so soft; untouched by any mode of labour, never having held anything more strenuous than a quill, while at the same time cradling the weight of an entire empire. 

"You're not," Philippe replied drily, squinting open a single eye. Louis's face was hovering above him, luminous in the sunshine. The light seemed to shine straight through his eyes, as if they were made more of glass than man. 

They remained that way for a moment, Louis dragging his thumb against his brother's pouting mouth, their damp breath mingling between them. Louis above him felt like a blanket before a fire in the Winter - a thick, heady comfort against a storm. He gleamed like he had been polished, and every thread embroidering his golden sleeves seemed to shimmer like daylight on water. Louis looked rich and precious, the loveliest of ornaments, and Philippe suddenly felt a distinct, yearning want, a spoilt desire to collect him, keep him, have him as one of the beautiful things of court. But the court entirely belonged to Louis, and the ferocity behind his brother's every lilting smile showed that something so beyond being a man could never be owned. But if anyone were to own him, Philippe knew, surely, like he knew his own name, it would be him. If there were any part of Louis to claim, Philippe would be the one to claim it. Louis's blood ran through his veins, and Louis was vein enough to favour him for it.

"There doesn't seem much to smile about," Louis said eventually, pulling away from his brother's mouth, and looking out over the silent scaffolds fronting Versailles. Not a worker stirred, yet Jacques and his team continued pruning diligently.

"You still have your gardener," Philippe replied, and Louis sighed.

"No amount of planting and trimming will create enough bedrooms to fit a palace."

"There are some I wouldn't mind forcing to sleep in the garden," Philippe mused, and a smile lifted at the corner of Louis's mouth.

"Like misbehaved dogs."

"Misbehaved dogs feel shame," Philippe corrected, and shifted to lay his fine head in Louis's fine lap. "Misbehaved dogs can still learn new tricks. You, brother, are insulting misbehaved dogs."

Louis smiled into the distance and rested his palm to Philippe's forehead, cool and smooth and pale as marble. Unbeknown to Philippe Louis was recalling a dream he had once had, of his brother emerging from ivory, like the tale told by Ovid. If Philippe had known, he would have been deeply, desperately amused, recalling the section of the story where Pygmalion could never love another woman after being overcome by the false woman's beauty. Philippe always remembered more parts of the tales than Louis, but Louis was always better at making up the stories themselves. When they were taught the Greek classics Louis would work his way around any question to which he did not know the answer by providing a more elaborate, more magnificent untruth, so beguiling their teacher could not help but be charmed. Louis pondered himself as creator, wondering if the dream told him more about how he saw his brother - artificial, cold, shaped by his hand - or more about himself as the craftsman of this great land. Jacques had told him that Kings had more in common with labourers than soldiers - soldiers destroyed, but labourers built something from nothing. Louis felt like his fingers were delving through the scraps of Versailles, and with spit and elbow grease he could forge something magnificent.

"Perhaps," Louis said, in the faraway tone that told Philippe he hadn't heard a word he had said. But Philippe did not mind. For in that moment his heart was free of the weighted, rusty chains that had bound it since his time at war, and he and his brother were alone in the garden on a fine Autumn day. His brother's slim fingers combed through his hair in a way they hadn't in more years than he could count, and he would take his brother's absent mindedness as affection, if it were all the affection he could have. Philippe felt soothed like a child, and as Louis dreamed of carving a new world from ivory, his brother fell asleep in his lap.

 

\---

 

Philippe had ordered his entourage away - even Chevalier, who was indignant and saw the order as a personal slight against his character - so he could sink, silently, into a bath. For a few minutes at least he could hear the Chevalier huffing and pacing on the other side of the door. It was their custom to bathe together, and the breaking of their regiment appeared to have shattered his lover's very perception of the world. But Philippe's body ached, as though he had been fighting for hours, and really, he thought, that was the truth of it. 

The water was scolding hot but he welcomed the pain as he sunk achingly into the tub. His muscles relaxed too suddenly, and it was an agony that ripped all the way through his body, knots and tension working loose in one quick rush. He had been fighting. Not the Spanish, not the Dutch - but a Frenchman. A stubborn, belligerent, wily Frenchman, and his only possible match in wit and repartee: himself. The battle had waged on for months, and only made him more tired. The raging voices in his head, the doubt, the fear, the clenching, shivering terror, the spasms, the sleeplessness, listlessness, the loss of appetite - for food, for sex, for anything - was draining him of his lifeblood. He felt as though Claudine had sliced his ankle and was bleeding him each night, though instead of the toxic bile flowing into the bowl, he was losing only blood, leaving the bile to cling to his insides, to dominate in a hostile takeover of his own body; his very person. 

Philippe felt possessed, stuffed to the brim with a darkness he couldn't shake, a taxidermy puppet bulging with rot. It was nigh impossible to think of anything but the gripping, unrelenting fear. He knew it was irrational. He knew he was safe, here, in the palace, guards on each and every side. But he felt exactly as he did on the front line, with blood and mud splattering his face. Sat at his own dinner table, beside his own brother, he felt as frightened as when he was plunging a sword into a Dutchman's quivering breast. He couldn't even sit on a horse without remembering the sensation of it slipping from between his legs, of plummeting into the wet dirt, of curling in on himself like some shelled creature to avoid the hooves stampeding around him.

The one dominant thought rippling through Philippe's mind was that he could not live like this. He could not have this throbbing, aching disease rob him of his joy, his autonomy, his very self-hood. He felt transformed against his will and all his mental strength could not reverse the effects. It was altering not just his mind, his feelings, but his responses to everything and everyone around him. He felt the tension in his brother, and saw the fear in the very corner of the Chevalier's eyes. He saw Henriette's flinching hesitation as his voice rose. Philippe had never been one to shout - he was a natural, glib debater, with a silver tongue of such earnest and provoking manipulation that shouting was never necessary - yet that was all he seemed to do. And even that was not enough. He wanted to scream, as though voicing the air from his lungs would force the demon within him out with it.

Philippe allowed his body to think further and further beneath the water, allowed the surface to rise above his head. He held his breath for as long as he could, then let it out in a stream of fine, flickering bubbles. His lungs screamed and the tender skin of his face burned in the steaming water but he tried to remain weightless beneath the surface. His short fingernails scrabbled for purchase against the bottom of the enamel tub, and eventually every muscle in his body rejected his will and propelled him from the depths. He gasped in great, mournful breaths, and didn't realise the scented water pouring from his face was mingled with the salt of his tears into he tasted them.

He thought he was free. But he would never be free. The veil was not lifting, so much as blowing gently in the wind.


	4. Strawberries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Montespan desires to know the situation of her King.

And then Louis was sick, and the sun began to fade in the sky.

Dinners were still an elaborate affair, because they knew Louis wouldn't want it any other way. The court had to remain distracted, enchanted, even without the glitter of his presence. Philippe took his chair, and for a moment, forgot about the screaming and bludgeoning of his internal world. There was gossip. Discussions of the activities of the court, because that was the only world they had. The comings and goings, lovings and hatings. So and so had stolen so and so's drink, but then so and so had worn a terribly similar dress to whoever. It was inconsequential, which was exactly what Philippe needed. He desired nothing but frivolity, and distraction. So he drank too much wine, poured it down his throat like nectar. It warmed him from the inside. A sweet crutch which lubricated his poison words. He was funnier and more clever than he had ever been in his life.

"Where is the King?" Montespan asked, conspiratorially, leaning into his body. She touched her hair with a finger, the other hand holding a juicy strawberry to her plush mouth. He stared at her lips, and did not know why.

"He's doing what he does best," he replied, a serpentine grin darting across his face. She returned the look, sucking the berry in sweet earnestness. He continued to look, and he did not know why.

"And what is that?" she asked, her voice velvet, her eyes clever.

"Why, he's flat on his back, of course," Philippe replied, and felt no regret.

Montespan laughed her lyrical laugh, and Philippe understood his brother's affection. In another world, without his brother's cock plundering her body, they could be friends.

"I've heard that's the best place from which to manage a country," she said, and he grinned while digging into the duck breast on his plate. He was drunk, and he was relieved he was drunk.

"It's the only way my brother knows," he said, and she leaned in closer.

"Well, if that's the way he does it best..."

"I'm sure he's never heard a complaint."

"Well I would not be the one to give the first."

"I wouldn't know."

And Montespan's eyes were darting, swift, like swallows on the breeze. "But you would like to, wouldn't you?" she said, and he could smell the sweet wine upon her breath.

He stared at her, as if she were some foreign entity, some precious yet utterly befuddling artefact from a distant sea.

"What ever could you mean?" he asked, sucking upon his fork.

"Well," she said, slow and easy, and he felt her fingers touch daintily upon his knee. "Would you not like to know?" she asked. "I'm very aware of how much brothers share."

His smile was resigned. "Louis and I do not share in those terms. We share a name, we share shoes. That is, historically, the extent of our sharing."

Montespan grinned at him, a terrifying, demonic grin. "Historically."

"What evidence do you have to the contrary?"

"Madame Valliere, when she is done with her whipping, does, at times, speak."

"And enchanting it is, I'm sure."

"Enchanting is definitely the word I would use," she emphasised, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes.

"Do not misinterpret me, Madame. My tastes are rather... clearly defined."

"Oh, I know all about your tastes," she promised, and her slight fingers squeezed about his knee caps. "But if you desire a weapon against your brother, you might find some more obliging than others."

He stared into the depths of her malicious, conspiring eyes and found his own. 

"You are a clever one," he stated, and she closed her lips around another strawberry.

"Why thank you."

"It's not a compliment," he replied, dry and resigned. "He's never liked them clever. He likes them dumb, and pretty, with open legs."

"Two out of three is still fair," she said, and he knew she was a woman he would like. "You're clever," she added, "And he still likes you."

"Barely," said Philippe, with an eye roll to the heavens and another glug of sweet, crimson wine.

"Not as much as you like him," and her voice was soft, suddenly, below the crowd. He met her gaze.

"I do not like my brother," he replied, adamant.

"You do not have to like him to love him."

"Sometimes I wonder if I even love him," he snorted, feeling the alcohol rush to his head like a breeze.

"You do not have to love him to want him," she said, and the empathy sobered him like diving into a cold lake.

He glanced suddenly, for reassurance in a moment of fright, to his right, as he had always glanced to his right, as he hoped forever he would glance to his right, and the seat was loud in its emptiness. His heart leapt into his throat and the duck surged through his guts. The sudden pangs of fear leapt through the glaze of alcohol and gripped him, pinning his arms to his side. 

There was a world, a potential world, a close world, a real world, where his brother did not exist.

There was the faintest potential upon the horizon that Philippe would be entirely, hysterically alone.

There was a world where the sun set.

His breathing caught in his throat and his heart rammed in his chest like a raging bull and his vision blurred, and he threw back his seat like a man possessed. His hands clung feebly to the edge of the table, dragging at the fine cloth, and his gold plate fell to the floor with a clatter, gravy spraying his ankles. He couldn't calm his breathing, nor his heart, nor the terrified repetition of his brain. Louis is dying. Louis is dying. Louis will be dead. Philippe's skin was clammy and he smelt blood, he smelt death, he smelt dirt, he smelt horses, he tasted their meat, his skin was awash with gunpowder and sweat and shame. He knew what happened when men died, and he knew the answer was a nothing, a gigantic, glaring, pointless nothing, into which his brother could descend.

He threw himself from the room, and never remembered Monstespan's promising hand upon his knee. 

No one noticed.


	5. The Chevalier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe is devastated by the loss of his lover, and Louis is the sun.

The Chevalier had been taken from him.

He only had one thing in the entire court that was his. He sat on the floor of the chapel and he ran an itinerary, being the methodical and rational man he was, of everything he had. He had his name, yes. His wealth, most definitely. But what did a name on a piece of paper and a legion of fine clothes mean if he had nothing else beside? He could spend all the livres the king had at his disposal on shoes but his nights were cold and desolate. 

The Chevalier understood. He knew the suffering Philippe had endured, and while he could not comprehend the terror that gripped him in spasms he was there. For months of nights the Chevalier had been there, when he had awoken before dawn, trembling, screaming, frightened, and all he had done was hold Philippe. The Chevalier's body had been there, a warm encompassing grasp reminding him of reality, his reality, skin against his back as horror paraded through his mind like some increasingly grotesque performance. He had never asked. He had never ordered an explanation. He had never demanded to know while Philippe's smiles were suddenly so rare, why he was no longer the light of the room. Yes, he refused to give Philippe time - yet while his terrors were at their height and the mere touch of a human being felt like glass grinding between his teeth, still, the Chevalier would not ask. He would grant Philippe his space, yes, while always demanding of his attention. The balance was a careful one. Philippe felt his freedom, while feeling wanted, needed, at the exact same time. 

Philippe could not recall a moment in their time together where he had doubted the Chevalier's devotion, his passion. Philippe had been reared in a world where he had been intentionally crafted to be undesirable, unwanted, a pale flicker of candlelight in the bright sunlight beams of his brother, but the Chevalier thought he was the sun. The Chevalier thought him to be king. The Chevalier believed in him as no one had ever done before, or would in the future. Philippe's entire life was obstacle after obstacle placed in his path to prevent him reaching the starry heights of royalty. His every desire and whim had been artificially constructed to deviate him from Louis's path. He was nothing, nothing at all, but a creature prevented from accessing the throne. Every decision, every thought surrounding his entire upbringing had one motivation - to protect Louis. And for once, once in his life he had something that had nothing to do with his brother, or the court, or Henriette, or his Dukedom, or his offspring. He had something entirely his own, someone who wanted him, someone who specifically and vibrantly refused to be challenged by the king's authority. 

And everything that had made Philippe love him had led to his downfall. 

The crushing weight of responsibility fell to Philippe's shoulders as he realised everything that made his lover his lover had lead to the Chevalier's entrapment. He loved the man for his refusal to bow to his brother, for his neglect for the King's authority, for his passion and enthusiasm for Philippe's own might, his own power, all the more impressive for having been curtailed by the state throughout the decades. Everything that made the Chevalier a warm, comforting presence in Philippe's bed had led to his demise. It was entirely his own fault. He had doomed the Chevalier by his own desire for some form of validation after a lifetime of strained, insistent neglect. 

He sat on the floor of the chapel and the weight upon his chest was a real, heavy thing, like a man laying upon him. The terror and the guilt were an all encompassing force, and he could never imagine thinking of anything else. He knew his life was now thinking of the Chevalier and his pain. He could only consider how his lover was so alone. He could only imagine the circumstances in which he was being kept. Could only barely comprehend what Fabien was doing to him. What would happen to his fine finger nails that had ripped down Philippe's back in sweet red welts? What was the fate of the blonde hairs that had nestled against his chest? How intact were those bones that had ground insistently and passionately against his own? Philippe had seen war. He had seen the fragments it had left of people. He knew what men were capable of. He knew the lows to which his brother would obliviously sink.

"I love him!" he roared, throwing open the doors to Louis's room. Louis still looked pale and worn as he sat at his mirrored table, wiping the gold from his face with rags dipped in a bowl of scented rose water.

"You love a traitor?" Louis asked, innocently and automatically, almost bored as he dragged the cotton across his fair face, making streaks in the paint that smeared his brow.

"You know perfectly well that he is not a traitor," Philippe hissed, standing behind his brother and clasping his slim shoulders, forcing their eyes to meet in the mirror. "This is another of your games."

"I have no time for games," Louis replied, somehow managing to be simultaneously intense and bored. He dipped the rag in the water and wrung it slowly, absently. "I also have no time for your pets."

"Pets?" Philippe spat, incredulous. "You know what he meant to me."

"Meant," Louis said, simply, looking up to him with a slow, deliberate stare, his face still beautiful half unpainted. "I'm glad you're embracing the past tense, Philippe."

Philippe leaned into him suddenly, pressing their temples together hard, glaring at his brother in the mirror. "I ask for nothing," he said slowly, and Louis sighed as he dabbed delicately beneath his wide, staring eyes.

"And yet you still ask for too much."

Philippe forced himself in front of his brother, blocking the view of the mirror. "After everything -" he gasped, "After everything I have done for you, everything I have fought for you, everything -"

"You expect your whore as a repayment for war?" Louis asked, and even though he was sat dominance radiated from his pores.

"No," Philippe said sadly, "Just to be left alone. Just to live my own life. My own choices. My own love."

"You do not have a life of your own," Louis said, simply bitterly. "Just as I do not have a life of my own. I am the King, you are the brother of the King. We have nothing but France and Her interests."

"What if I don't want France?" Philippe begged, despair edging his tone. "What if I just want him? What if we left Versailles, retired from the court, returned to Saint-Cloud?"

"Out of the question. Of course I considered all of the options. Do you think I wanted this for you, brother? Do you think I wanted you to suffer?"

Philippe stared at the ceiling, pausing as he tugged at his own dark hair. "Honestly? Yes. I believe your entire life has been founded on me being deprived and you don't know how to function without my lacking in some way," he said slowly, sourly.

"Lacking? You lack nothing. You have everything. Everything you could ever desire. Your ingratitude is an embarrassment," Louis said, but his voice was still flat, and he still dabbed at his face, attempting to peer beyond Philippe's body into the mirror.

Philippe ripped the rag from his hand and dropped to his knees between his brother's legs, grasping desperately at his thighs. He stared at him for a moment before reaching behind himself, soaking and wringing the rag before approaching his brother's face with a tender deference.

"True, I have more than most. And with that perspective surely asking for him means little. I keep quiet, my King. I remain where you tell me to remain. Surely I have earnt his company," he said softly, wheedling, trying to manipulate Louis as he gently grasped his chin, leaning to pull the golden powder from his fine, structured face. He swept his cheekbones and under his eyes, stroked softly across his hairline. "Please," he begged, and felt Louis soften beneath his hands.

"Why do you need him?" Louis asked after a silent moment, switching his eyes to Philippe's, suddenly squeezing his thighs against his brother's ribs. Philippe's hand froze against Louis's jaw, and Louis wrapped his fingers around his wrist.

"Is this not enough?" Louis asked softly, leaning in to rest his forehead against the Duke's, closing his fair blue eyes, his skin still clammy from the rose water and the stage powder. Philippe took in a shaky breath as his brother's warmth radiated through his skin, as his soft hair brushed his cheeks. They sat for a moment in symbiosis, rocking gently together, until Louis released his wrist and closed his arms around his brother's shoulders in unfamiliar embrace. In honour of his brother's transparency, Philippe took time to consider the question as the rag grew warm in his hand, and they could hear its dripping to the tiled floors. Louis was everywhere, his scent everywhere, his warmth everywhere, his arms everything, everything in the entire world. It was hard to think of anything when Louis was breathing against his mouth, measured and slow, like he was asleep. He dropped the rag to the side of Louis's stool, and leant forward to kiss his mouth. It was brief, and soft, but pressing; an intense moment of lips to lips, their eyes squeezed closed as the silenced enfolded them. Philippe tasted the make-up still caked to Louis's mouth, and he tasted the betrayal still laying thick in his own throat.

"No," Philippe said simply, sadly, before standing and walking from the room.


	6. The Man Who Would Not Be King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe follows his brother's choreography.

Versailles at night was the most spectacular of places. Philippe had to give his brother credit for his taste, if not for anything else. Their taste was similar indeed - the finest clothes,the greatest interiors, the most luscious furnishings. They shared a flair for the ostentatious. They shared blood. They shared a wife. And they had just shared a kiss.

Philippe found himself prowling through the halls of Versailles in the earliest hours. The halls are cold and beautifully, wonderfully quiet. Rooms alive with noise throughout the day - gossip, laughter, music, pianoforte - were still, and Philippe was touched by the possibility of tranquillity. He felt as though he had discovered something long lost, uncovered some sort of relic, in finding the potential for darkness and silence in a world of such unbearable noise and light. It was with this spirit of the keeper of what should not be that he wandered through each corridor and room. The gilded ornamentations glinted eerily in the passing light of the candle clutched in his hand, and the flame wavered as he soaked in the muted, shaded glory of it all, as if seeing it for the first time. Versailles in shadows was a different Versailles altogether, a precious secret, and the emptiness was simultaneously liberating and oppressive. While the peace gave rest to his aching mind, the solitude was a reminder of his loneliness, rather than a balm. His bed was empty, and cold, and so he wandered. Sleep evaded him, and in its place were his walks through the darkness of this fantastical dream-world version of his brother's finest creation.

Philippe could still feel the softness of Louis's mouth on his own, could still feel the angle of his jaw moulded into his palm. His heart thrummed with it, a delicate vibration, not the desperate banging of unrestrained lust but the hummingbird-wings of a thrill in a heart that thought itself no longer able to be thrilled. Philippe had felt nothing but unrelenting, aching, consuming terror for so long, and kissing his brother was the first moment he had felt anything but. It was a moment of respite, like a cool room in the height of summer. 

He came to the hall where that evening his brother had danced, announcing his return to society. The room still smelt of wine and cramped, sweating bodies. Philippe had watched, from the most hidden corner he could find, as his brother rose, a golden phoenix from the ashes. He had watched his slender hands cast sharp shapes in the air, and his feet slide across the floor in pointed poses. He had watched his brother manipulate the hearts of everyone in the room with his magnificence, and his beauty. Philippe thought it criminal that someone so powerful could be both brilliant and beautiful, and so tremendously cruel. Like the rarest flower laced with poison thorns. He had watched his poison brother dance that night, and wondered at him, at his elegance and his viciousness, at his intelligence and his paranoia. How someone so bright could be so dim was beyond Philippe's realm of comprehension. He stood where his brother had unveiled that marvellous face, and dropped his head to blow out the candle. The hall was thrown into magnificent darkness, and Philippe set the candle by his feet, and began to dance his brother's dance. He moved through the darkness at his sleeping brother's will, following the movements the King had choreographed, knowing Louis would never see him to do so, and somehow that was important. He did not disobey his brother - he merely gave the impression of doing so.

Philippe would do anything Louis asked of him, but he would not pay heed to the King. Because Louis was intelligent, and the King was paranoid. Louis was magnificent, and the King was cruel. Louis was his brother, and the King was his prison guard. Philippe had no desire to be King. He just had a desire for his brother not to be. 

As he swept across the dining hall in the inky darkness, so thick and rich he could almost feel it resisting his movements, he thought of all the fantasies he had had throughout his life. Of what his relationship with his brother would be if his brother were just some aristocrat, some fine man of the court, as opposed to the physical embodiment of France itself. What if they were the dancing puppets at some other King or Queen's celebration? Such thoughts were treasonous, he knew, but what _if_. What if Louis were just his brother, and nothing more. Would he hate him so much? Would he love him so much? These thought exercises would always run out of steam, because Louis had always been King, or intending to be King, and Philippe had always been the King's brother. They were what they were for those reasons. Removing the crown from the equation would alter their very beings, would render them unrecognisable, and leave Philippe daydreaming about men he did not know. Philippe still wondered, and thought that the imaginary Philippe and Louis, dukes of some insignificant region of France, were probably happy, in some imagined world. In the darkness, this delirious notion brought him comfort. He wondered if this imagined Philippe and Louis would prefer dancing, or playing cards. Whether they preferred wine or spirits. He wondered if this Philippe would ever have gone to war, or have even craved the taste for it. He wondered if, in this world, Louis and Philippe would ever share a kiss.

And the sweet humming in his heart continued, as he followed his brother's designs through the darkened hall until the sun began the stain the horizon.


	7. Orviétan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe joins Louis for his bath, and reminds him how much he hates Moliére. Note: This chapter contains a graphic description of a panic attack.

The King was bathing, and Philippe was drunk.

The Duke, his breath stinking of rich, sweet wine, burst into the King's chambers, a gaggle of guards clattering behind him voicing stunned disapproval. "Oh, I like what you've done with the place," Philippe slurred, stumbling as he turned his head towards the ceiling, spinning his body in a slow circle as the guards looked reluctantly from the King to his brother. Louis held up a single hand, and a short flick of his wrist had the guards resuming their position from behind the closed doors. "Very... majestic," Philippe continued, his glass still clutched in one slender hand, the bottle in the other. "Want some?" Louis gave a brief nod, his face a picture of patience. Philippe knew that look. It was an infuriating look. It was the look Louis gave when he would sit back and patiently watch how things play out, so utterly secure in his own ability to dismantle any situation that he would allow any situation to unfold. Louis looked amused, as Philippe moved to perch on the edge of his tub, sloppily filling his glass and handing it to his brother, "I only have the one, I'm afraid," he apologised, before glancing at the bottle with a shrug and taking a swig from that.

"Was this the purpose of your visitation? Surely you are not short of drinking partners in Versailles," Louis said archly, taking a sip of the wine, unabashed in his nakedness, his arms resting on the tub's sides, the relaxation seeping from him in waves, the sort of relaxation only seen in a man utterly in control of himself.

Philippe, on the other hand, was clearly a man not even slightly in control of himself.

"Purpose?" Philippe asked, lifting a brow, "I just supposed this was something we do now. Bath talks. Asserting one's authority by ensuring the other is naked. Thought it could become a little hobby between us. A bonding exercise," he replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. 

"I'll be sure to schedule it in from now on," Louis replied, and Philippe took another long drag on his bottle.

"I think it's more fun if it's spontaneous," Philippe corrected, leaning into his brother's face and swaying dangerously. He noticed Louis wasn't drinking, and tapped the bottom of his glass with one fine nail. "Come on, brother. Catch up."

"I'm not sure there's enough wine left in the palace for me to catch up with you, Philippe," Louis said, but a tiny smile caught on the corner of his mouth, and he sipped as commanded, his wide eyes above the glass saying _'see? Are you happy?'_

Philippe smirked, "Blame your mistress. She's an awful influence."

"Which?" Louis asked, and Philippe snorted into his drink. 

"The only one I would bother talking to."

"Ah," Louis intoned, in a moment of realisation, "You approve of vicious, witty Montespan. What a surprise."

"Another bottle and I would have taken her for myself."

Louis sighed and sunk deeper into the fragrant, slightly steaming water, closing his eyes. "She has more balls than you're used to."

Philippe thought suddenly, irrationally, how easy it would be to sink his brother's fine head under the water and leave it there. The thought was an unwelcome, undesirable intrusion, and he felt the wine rise in his throat in a shot of bile. He took a deep breath in and stood, turning his back on his brother, pacing the steamy room.

"We were talking about books, plays, things of culture," he said, spinning on his heel to circle Louis's tub, and the motion would have been predatory if it weren't for Louis's absolutely calm, and the content hmm that rose from his mouth. "And I remembered that play, that terrible tragedy we had to sit through, all because you favour that big-nosed man with the ridiculous brows - what was his name again?"

"Moliére."

"Moliére! Yes, that awful tragedy, with the weeping and the swooning, but then there was the other play, with the many doctors - "

"Doctor Cupid," Louis intoned.

"Ridiculous brows, ridiculous name."

"If I recall you made your opinions quite clear at the time, brother."

"If he didn't want criticism he should have entered a more private profession."

"You made the poor man weep," Louis replied pointedly, eyes still closed, the surface of the water moving gently against his chin.

"Very dramatic of him, and significantly more entertaining than any of his dreadful doctors droning on. Though, _your_ doctor would probably enjoy a copy of his playbook. She seems the sort to delight in the incompetence of others."

"I'll have Bontemps take one to her," Louis replied, bored, but taking a mental note. He had always enjoyed bestowing gifts upon his favourites, and Philippe was most frequently the one to choose the gifts.

"Have the little eyebrow man sign it for her."

"I fear he will not return to the palace while you remain," said Louis, and Philippe was sitting near enough to see his half smile reflected in the still surface of the bath water.

"Is that an invitation to leave?" Philippe asked, eyes comically wide, forever an opportunist.

Louis's smile widened, "Are you asking me to choose between you?"

"Ah, I thought it were too good to be true," Philippe sighed, jokingly, but the joke was based upon his own entrapment, which wasn't very funny at all. "Anyway, the play, with the doctors, and that terrible woman."

"I recall."

"I am her."

Louis quirked open an eye.

"That is how I feel. She is how I feel." Philippe's voice was suddenly solemn, and he resumed his perch at the edge of the tub, the tails of his jacket sinking into the water and stroking across his brother's fair chest. He dropped his hand into the water, over his brother's heart, feeling the coarse hairs there. "Incurable," he said, suddenly choked, with the speed of emotional descent that can only occur with the lubrication of alcohol. He had not slept properly for weeks. He drunk to knock himself out, and frequently found himself fully clothed in the middle of the afternoon, sprawled across his bed, with a pounding head only more wine could soothe. Except tonight he hadn't drunk to sleep - he had drunk to talk. To explain. To try to articulate the thickness that weighed across his chest and grew and grew like some freakish child, heavier and heavier, feasting on his insides. "The miserable woman, who was miserable for no reason, and all the finest doctors of the land could not fix her, because it was the sort of misery that could not be fixed," he said softly, quickly, meaningfully, longing to be understood, and especially to be understood by the man before him.

"I think you'll find she was cured by being married. And you already are," Louis replied, offhanded, eyes still shut, and Philippe felt himself deflate. Felt the air vanish from the midst of his sail. Another violent, intrusive thought clattered through his brain and he envisaged his fingers closing around his brother's fair throat, and had to choke back the thought with a thick swallow of wine.

"Observant, brother," Philippe said sadly, drily, snatching his hand away from Louis's body. But he had moved too quickly, and knocked the wine from Louis's hand. The glass and its contents fell into the tub, and the red bloomed from the point of its fall like an opening flower. Philippe watched, mesmerised, as the water changed colour, and slowly and intentionally upended his own bottle into Louis's bath water. He watched the red trickle down his brother's chest and pool across his stomach, seeping like an open wound. Louis stood suddenly, the stained water dripping from his pale, lean body in rivulets that Philippe had the sudden, intrusive need to catch with his tongue. Instead he too stood, as his brother held out a habitual, demanding hand for his towel.

"I heard the Kings of Egypt would bathe in asp's milk - perhaps the Kings of France shall bathe in wine?" Louis asked, and Philippe could barely hear him. He automatically handed his brother a soft, elaborately patterned towel, but could not feel his hands as he did it, could not see Louis wrapping it about his body. All he could see was the bath of crimson water about his brother's feet. So much red water, more than a body could hold. His heart was rushing, his own blood pounding through his ears, his skin suddenly clammy and hot. The entire room was too bright and too warm and he felt his fingertips go numb as the rushing sound became deafening and his knees turned to soup. He didn't even process the sudden rising of the floor to meet him as his eyes flashed white, and floating shapes danced through his vision, and he thought he was going blind, or deaf, and deaf, and his heart was failing, his organs failing, his brain was wiping itself clean, and he needed a doctor, like one of the ridiculous doctors from the play, because there was so much blood, endless blood, bloodsoaked clothes and dirt and hands and the taste of it in his mouth. He didn't feel anything but terror, the sort of terror he knew a man only feels when he is sure he is about to die, didn't even feel his brother's cradling arms around him, or hear Louis shouting for his guards, for Bontemps, for Claudine, for anyone. He didn't hear the panic in his brother's voice. He didn't feel his light, deft fingers in his hair. He didn't feel his face being clutched to Louis's wet skin, nor feel his arms shaking about him, or the kisses being peppered across his face. There was only the blood, and the doctors, and their play. Philippe, through the fog, remembered the end of the play, where the man who thought he was doing the tricking turned out to be the one to be tricked, and no one really knew who was running the show, or if anyone was running the show at all, and if he could have breathed, he would have laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Louis was a patron of Moliére, and watched Dr. Cupid in the summer of 1665, going some way towards legitimising theatre in seventeenth century France. Louis then became his patron, and even the godfather to his children. Whether Philippe also viewed this performance is unknown, as are his feelings on the Shakespeare of France.


	8. Branded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe awakens after his traumatic evening, and someone unexpected finally listens.

Philippe stirred, tossing his fine head atop his pillow, his mussed, knotted hair being smoothed by a woman's small fingers.

"Minette," he murmured, his voice coming out hoarse, and the light felt unbearably bright as his eyes cracked open. The room swam gently into focus, and it was Montespan's face above his, her hair tumbling about her shoulders.

"You're not the first brother to refer to me by that name," she said softly, wryly, but her hands never stilled in smoothing out the lengths of his dark hair, silencing the apology in his mouth.

"Between us, my darling, we could write entire tomes on being second best," Philippe replied, and tried to lift himself from the bed. His head swum, suddenly, and he remembered the wine, the vast, vast quantities of wine. Through the throb of pain he saw his brother asleep in a chair at the foot of his bed, still with a towel wrapped about his waist. Philippe startled, utterly surprised, and cast his eyes to Montespan.

"He hasn't left your side. Even to dress," she explained, her voice low to avoid waking the King. Philippe sunk back on the pillows to allow his singed mind to absorb the information before him, and struggled against the tiredness that permeated his very bones as Claudine slid into the room.

In his experience, doctors tended to bustle about and fuss, as though trying to look busy. Claudine, on the other hand, would glide, each movement effortless and calculated as though he had choreographed it all. A woman who knew herself, her space, and the task at hand with a total clarity. Her smooth movements made him feel safe, and as her cool hand pressed to his brow he admired his brother's choice.

"Please tell me death is nigh," he said, voice still rough, and Claudine's small mouth smiled at him.

"Unfortunately not. I believe you simply..." she paused, as if trying to find the right words so as not to offend the brother of the King, "fell into a faint."

Philippe raised an eyebrow at her, even from his prone position of utter exhaustion. "A faint? Is that a new medical term for falling blind drunk?"

Claudine opened her mouth as if to say something, and Philippe stopped her with a hand. "It's embarrassing that I cannot handle my wine, at my age," he said imperiously, stubbornly, his tone urging that she not suggest any other reason for his 'faint'. "But that was all it was. A lot of wine, and not much sleep."

"Are you not sleeping well?" Claudine asked, and Philippe's lips twitched.

"No. But there is a lot on my mind."

"Of course..." she said, but her face was pinched with concern, and Montespan was staring at him with the same furrowed brow. They did not believe him. He did not believe himself. But Louis was stirring at the foot of his bed, his blue eyes blinking into the light. He did not move from his spot, prone in his seat, body crumpled gently and legs slightly open. Instead he just blinked slowly, his mouth lifting as his eyes met his brother's. 

"Good morning," he said, his voice low and sticky with sleep. 

"My Sire," Philippe replied, and Louis, seemingly satisfied, stood and asked to speak to Claudine outside the room.

"They're talking about me," Philippe said after a moment, slipping his hand to take Montespan's where they lay grasped in her lap.

"Everyone talks about you constantly," Montespan pointed out, lacing her fingers in his.

"They think there's something wrong with me," he said, averting his gaze and staring through the window across the ground, his Adam's apple rising with a slow gulp.

"Darling," Montespan sighed, leaning to place a dry kiss to his brow, "The only people worth associating with are those with something a little wrong with them."

"Not a little," he said, voice a low scrape, cheek pressed to his pillow. "Not a quirk, or a characteristic, or an eccentricity. Not a love for grotesque shoes or a passion for vile men -"

"- though you have those in abundance."

Philippe smiled. "Something broken. In my brain. Like something has been rattled loose and all inside will never be complete."

Montespan sat with him in silence for a moment, listening to the King's voice rising on the other side of the door. They could not make out the words, but it was clear he was displeased with what he was hearing. 

"Sometimes men see things," Montespan said slowly, breaking the silence. "Things they can never forget, no matter how much they drink, or fuck, or eat, or sleep. And they burn like a brand, a physical thing, a scar, but unseen."

Philippe did not reply, and simply allowed her to stroke his hands until he fell back into a restless, aching sleep.


	9. The Fresh Blood in thy Cheeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe asks Henriette why she never visited him as he lay bedridden.

Aside from the debilitating exhaustion following his fainting fit, Philippe felt well in body, if not in mind. He remained in his bed for a few days longer, and could not quite recall how he had occupied his time. His mind was too restless to read, or draw. His brother, despite showing initial care, failed to visit him, and when Montespan entered his chambers, intent on keeping him informed of the latest gossip, he found he could barely hear what she was saying through the possessing fog of his mind. His ability to pay attention to anything had been dismantled, and he did not have the energy or the knowledge to put it back together. So he simply lay, drifting in and out of consciousness, as his mind alternated between an uncomfortable blankness and a wild torrent of thoughts and voices. 

On the third day he awakened, and felt oddly, incongruously refreshed. A faint spark of motivation lingered in his breast, and he found himself capable of bathing and dressing, and felt the sudden need to take some air, despite the very idea of leaving his room bringing with it a crippling fear previous to this moment. So light was his heart that he decided he would like his wife to join him on his walk. He had found himself wondering about her condition, and eager to see her growing belly, though for the last week, at least, such things had been less than an afterthought; more of a niggling remembrance at the back of his mind than any kind of priority. He knew they were important, of course. He logically, rationally categorised his wife and incoming child as deserving of his attention. Yet for periods at a time he could not muster the energy to feel anything for them, or anything for anything at all, aside from a slow simmer of despair.

"Henriette," he greeted her, a smile soft on his lips as he entered her chambers, only for the lightness of his heart to instantaneously deflate as she looked up from her book with a glimmer of derision in her eyes, only to immediately return to her reading.

"How are you feeling?" he persevered, moving around to where she lay curled on her sofa.

"Well," she replied shortly, her eyes fixed on her book.

"And the baby?"

"I have asked, he has not replied," she said, short and sharp, and Philippe realised the immensity of her fury if her sweetness had been tempered by sarcasm. Henriette had been blessed with a naturally quick mind, but she blunted the wit of her tongue out of kindness and consideration - a process Philippe himself had never undergone, or much understood, yet still found himself admiring. Those who saw Henriette in court found her quiet and dear, a sparkling thing, yet soft. Philippe knew her to be informed, eloquent, and in her moments of rage, entirely debilitating in her cutting remarks.

"You did not visit me when I was bedridden," he said suddenly, feathers ruffled - it was he who should be angry. It was he who laid in bed without so much as a soft word from his wife. It was he who had said her name, and it not so much as reach her ear.

"I was worried I would not fit into the room, as it was so packed with hoards of visitors," she said, turning a page with a deliberate slowness.

"Hoards?" he asked, eyebrow raised.

"I heard the Madame Montespan was notably obliging, and demonstrates special skill in mopping brows."

Philippe sighed through his nose and flopped down heavily beside her on the sofa, taking the book from her hands and placing it beside him, before placing his own palm to her curved belly, warm beneath the layers of garments.

"I understand if you do not wish to be in the same room as the woman, but you could have visited when she was otherwise disposed." He searched her face, wondering why jealous feelings towards Montespan would prevent one of his dearest friends from demonstrating any kind of concern. Philippe found himself, as he often found himself, yearning gently for Henriette's attention, her approval, her soft voice and careful hands. He loved Henriette as dearly as a sister. At least, he assumed that was the feeling he had, as his only precedent for sibling feeling was currently in riotous, indistinct turmoil. 

"I cannot see why you would need me when you had her doting hands and clever words," Henriette retorted, still staring into her lap, and he heard a tremble at the edge of her phrasing. "Everyone always says how very clever she is. Most talk of little else."

Philippe furrowed his brow. "You are my wife," he said, as though it were the most self-explanatory thing in the world. "You are expected to be by my side."

"And she is not expected to be by your side," Henriette said sharply, suddenly meeting his eyes, her own very dark and slightly wet. "Which is why it is so very surprising to me her being there. I heard it was her with whom you were drinking before your fall. Her with whom you were drinking the night before that, and walking with the day before that even. It must be wonderful, to have gained such a very clever friend," she said in one quick rush, pushing his hand away from her and standing to walk to the window.

Philippe stared at her retreating back in gormless amazement as the meaning of her words careened into the back of his head like a wild horse. "Minette..." he said softly.

"Monsieur," she returned, clipped and formal. He rose and followed her to the window, sliding to his knee by her side. He clasped her hands in his own and looked up at her, blinking in the bright beams of Autumn sun pouring through the window and highlighting the rich bloom of her cheeks.

"Minette," he said again, and she looked down upon him with a frustrated little sigh. "You are my _wife_ ," he reiterated with feeling, "You know what that means."

"It means we don't love each other as we should," she said softly, and he could hear the tears in her voice.

"But we love each other as best we can," he finished, completing the phrase they had pledged together since his brother had designed their union. His eyes were wide and earnest, and her hand was soft as it came to rest upon his cheek.

"I know there will always be men in your life," she said, "but I always thought I would be the only woman." Philippe's heart sunk, as he fully comprehended the feelings of his oldest friend, feeling her loneliness seep through his very pores.

"I am not my brother," he smiled sadly. He drew her fingers to his mouth and kissed each knuckle in turn. "It is why you will never love me, and while you will always love me. Remember that." He rose to his feet and Henriette stepped to rest her small head against his chest. He could feel how much she missed Louis as if the feelings were his own. He could feel it radiating through her, driving her, spreading out to the tips of her fingers and her toes. He rocked her gently in his arms, and thought of the child inside her. He hoped they would never feel this kind of yearning; such a deep sense of lacking. He hoped such empty people could create a being so full, and that their suffering would not seep into its blood, like a disease. He hoped their baby did not feel its parents ache for a King who saw them as pawns. 

That evening Henriette lost the little being inside of her, and Philippe ceased wondering, and ceased hoping, and suddenly knew an emptiness beyond which he had ever imagined.


	10. A Comedy of Manners, with Tragic Undertones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe reels from the loss of his child, and lashes out against Louis's seeming apathy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Light smut.

Philippe had lost his child. One of his oldest and most beloved friends was curled up in bed, having blood wiped from her thighs, fighting to accept the new hollowness within her. They had lost their child. The child of Henriette, of Louis, and Philippe. The last thread in the world that bound them together, body and mind, was gone before it even had a chance to live.The rage was so mighty, so all-consuming, that it made him feel sick, like eating too much cake, or too much wine, the anger an intoxicating goodness that he could simply not get enough of, greedily filling his belly with it, gorging on the fury. He felt plump with it, rosy with it, pregnant with concentrated hatred for the world his mother had spewed him into, the world he was meant to love, the one his brother was supposed to rule. He ached for his child, for Henriette, and for the Chevalier. 

He needed his dearest friend, his strong hands and steady mouth and the smell of him wrapped about his body. He needed the lilt of his voice, the touch of his hair, the scrape of his stubble against his mouth. The helplessness felt like a restlessness, the utter hopelessness clawing at his skin like cabin fever. He burst from the palace, not even wearing the right clothes for riding, his shoes too heeled, too fine, and didn't even call for a horse, but marched to the stables himself. 

He had lost his child. He had lost his lover. He had lost his mind in the war. He had nothing, he was nothing. His wife was drowning in her own resigned brand of devastation, and there was nothing he could do to fix it. The sleeplessness was wringing every shade of energy from his body. The nightmares when he did sleep were torturing his mind and warping it out of shape. The slightest sudden noise would have him jumping, a timid little mouse. The hatred he felt for everything and everyone around him tasted like rich bile and grew each day. He was alone. He slept alone, when he could sleep. He ate alone, when he could eat. He was trapped in this perverse prison, and everything had been taken away from him, by God, by the King. He had fought this war for his brother, and wounded his mind in the process, and as a display of gratitude the King had taken his one comfort, his one constant companion in this world. The King had given him a wife who would never be his. Indeed, the King had probably given them a child, a child that would be raised in Philippe's name, and Philippe had accepted it, had grown to love the thing that was not yet made, and that had been taken from him, too. And so used was Philippe to knowing Louis was the source of his every pain that against rhyme and reason he blamed his brother for the loss of the child, too. Louis was so consistently the bane of his existence, the director of his agony, that the natural assumption was he in some way lay behind this ill, too. If he had been gentler to Henriette, if he had not withdrawn his affections, if she were happier, more fulfilled, then perhaps this would not have happened. Louis's power was so great, so whole and total, that Philippe felt if his brother simply willed something, it would be.

Philippe rode out to the clifftop that looked across Versailles and wanted so entirely _not to stop_ , to plummet deep into the abyss below, that the only thing that stopped him was some vestigial sympathy for the life of the creature he rode. The horizon was encased in a skirt of fog, a thick gauze that reduced his view. All was a blur before him, whether for the fog or through the hot, angry tears that seared against his lashes, he did not know. His haste in getting off the horse lead to him half-climbing, half-falling, coming to an ungainly stop and stumbling towards the edge. The wind was cool and crisp and blew his hair out behind him, stinging his tender cheeks and ruffling the open front of his shirt. He marvelled at the drama of the pose, like some Dutch painting, a barely-dressed man stood before a Yvelines sun set. Philippe was always one for melodrama, but in that moment found himself laughable; a badly daubed joke, an absolute pastiche of misery.

How did his life become this? He remembered a time when everything was wine, fine shoes, and the Chevalier's breath on his neck. Would any of this be easier with his lover by his side? Or was the problem not with the Chevalier's absence, but for the reason for his absence? Not that the Chevalier was gone, but that Louis had taken him from him. The betrayal stung, and Louis's nonchalance to Henriette's suffering rubbed vinegar in his wounds.

Almost as though he had conjured him, through some feat of magic, he heard hooves kicking up the dirt behind him, and the soft drop of his brother to the ground. He did not look back, understanding with some genetic surety that it was Louis walking towards him, as though his blood called to his own, and his veins thrummed in answer.

A hand fell to his shoulder, and he shrugged it off with a violence even he hadn't anticipated.

"Brother," Louis said, calm and measured, and he loathed him for his balance in a time of such upheaval. 

"To whom do you refer?" Philippe breathed through his teeth, his gaze fixed ahead on the horizon. He was frightened about what he would do if he saw his brother's face.

"I know you are hurting - "

"Do you?" he interjected sharply, "And how would you recognise such a feeling?"

Louis's fingers clenched on his shoulder. "Your pain is my pain. I feel it as keenly as I would my own."

Philippe spun on him then. "If you felt my pain you would not be able to move," he spat, face flushed and eyes bright, though the circles beneath were dark. "You would not be able to sleep, or eat, or function. If you understood how I feel you would not keep me locked in this gilded cage. You would not take my sole comfort from me. You would not toy with my wife until her insides _die_ with the ache of it -"

Philippe's head snapped round and he was so numb it took him a moment to realise it was because Louis's hand had collided with his face. He stared at his brother, and Louis cradled his hand to his chest.

"You will not blame me for the loss of Henriette's child," Louis said slowly, voice low and dangerous and eyes glowing with an animal intensity as the facade of composure slid to the ground. Philippe touched a thumb to the corner of his mouth, and as it came away bloody, he grinned. 

"Even if I do not, there is still plenty more blame left for you," he said quietly, before backhanding his brother across the face. Louis stumbled back and Philippe's body coursed with a sudden mad energy, a terrifying strength that electrified him to the core of his being. He felt in his fingertips, in his groin, in the very tips of his eyelashes, and in his mouth, his sore, broken mouth, as Louis raised his head with a murderous glare. 

"Would it kill you to take one small breath of responsibility upon yourself?" Louis hissed, "I wonder sometimes how you would live with yourself and your actions if you did not have me to take the brunt of the burden of your mistakes and failings!" Philippe opened his mouth to respond but Louis took a step towards him, waving a furious hand, the skin of his knuckles broken.

"Every lack in your character you attribute to my preventing you from achieving glory. You blame our mother, our father, the court, your position, for your lack of education, your lack of power, even your _perversion_ -"

"My perversion?!" Philippe barked, and could not help the laugh that burst from his mouth. "From the man who has fucked more women than he has beads on his rosary," he said slowly, pointedly, his eyes narrowing as Louis's widened. "From the man who imprisoned his own brother's lover out of some type of - what, my King? Jealousy?" Philippe raised his eyebrows and watched the colour rush to his brother's cheeks.

"Only you could make an act of treason about your own ego. So desperate in your refusal to accept the pathetic weakness of that man that you invent fairy-tales."

"Because you would know nothing of weakness, would you? You stand here, in your finery, at the centre of this ludicrous prison, and you think you rule, but you are as trapped as the rest of us," Philippe laughed sadly. "Perhaps even more so. So bound in your authority that you can no longer so much as feel." Philippe grabbed his brother's hand and pushed it over his own heart, clasping his fingers tight to his breast. "Do you feel anything?" he asked, despairing. "Do you feel the suffocation you have created in those Hellish corridors? Do you feel Henriette's heart break every time you fail to knock upon her door?" he demanded, pulling Louis's body closer to his, wrapping his other hand about his face, pressing his thumb to the soft curve of his lip. "Did you worry for me when you sent me out to fight your bloody, useless war? Did you calculate whether my life was worth your territories?"

"You wanted to fight -"

"I wanted to please you!" Philippe cried desperately, shaking his brother earnestly, desperately trying to get closer to him, to make him feel, as though he could pass him empathy, sympathy, through touch alone.

"I wanted to serve you. And now look at me. Look at what I have become. I made myself a _monster_ for you, and all you can do is - is play cards, and build galleries, and choose orange trees with your gardener," he sighed, pressing his forehead to Louis's and closing his eyes as his entire body deflated, so acutely aware that their position was the mirror of that in which he had kissed his brother's mouth. "Please tell me you feel anything. I cannot live under a King who feels nothing. Please tell me you feel _this_ ," he begged, and the breath was knocked out of him as Louis shoved him backwards. 

Philippe opened his eyes and was shocked by what he saw. His usually terrifyingly composed brother was trembling, his face flushed, his eyes glistening, wide and bright like a cornered animal, so dilated they were black. He looked like a man drowned in conflict; a man who was either going to hit him or run, and as Louis threw his body against his own Philippe braced himself to be hit again, and was stunned when Louis's mouth crashed against his. Where their first kiss (was it even their first? Could he really trust his memory to tell him whether this had never happened before, in all the years they had grown and learnt with each other?) was a soft press of lips, this was teeth and tongue and rage. Philippe grabbed the sides of his brother's head and returned the embrace with an equal fury, and Louis did not seem to know what to do with his hands until his hands were everywhere, groping at Philippe's shoulders and sliding down his back and kneading his arse.

And Philippe found the answers to the things he had been wondering for so long. He could feel that Louis could feel. He felt the loss, anger, betrayal, and beyond it all, the fear. The vulnerability of being the world's brightest target, and the fear of legacy, of history, of memory, crushing down upon him. He could feel it in the way Louis clung to him, pressed against him as though he were trying to crawl into him. Philippe wrapped his fingers into Louis's dark hair, so similar to his own, and tasted his mouth, his teeth, Philippe's own blood smearing between their lips - _their_ blood.

They sunk into the soft ground and all Philippe could hear was their mingled, frantic breathing and the soft snuffling of their horses, the clomp of their hooves into the earth. The grass was damp beneath him and the sun had dipped entirely beneath he horizon, leaving the world in a darkness almost tinged red. Louis was heavy and insistent atop of him, and their clothes were uncomfortably bunched between them, and then the King was between his thighs and their hips were grinding in a way so sweet but almost painful, almost stinging with the rough friction of it, and it was the most perfect thing Philippe had ever felt. Their bodies rocked together in a jerking rhythm and Philippe ached with the tension of it, with the sound of Louis's little gasps, their taste in his mouth. And for the first time in so long Philippe's mind was full of something other than the thunder-crash of gunfire and the spurting of blood from the necks of men he knew. Instead it was consumed, entirely, with Louis. The smell of him, the taste of him, the kiss that was too wet, too messy, his chin slick, as they worked the fury of decades out against each other's bodies. Philippe understood. He knew. In the rocking of hips and the grinding of flesh he knew, he knew that Louis was not a God, not a King, but a man, as blood and bone as himself. Louis was not his enemy, not his downfall, not his saviour, nor his nightmare, but a man. And in the moment Louis's body shivered suddenly upon him with the broken release of orgasm, and Philippe's own hit him out of nowhere with the unexpected force of a tidal wave, Philippe finally knew his brother. 

They lay, sticky and hot and panting against each other's damp necks, the vague embarrassment of rutting like adolescents tempered by the satisfaction of release. Louis rose in silence, and Philippe was almost terrified to look upon his brother's face until he realised the King was holding out a hand to him, the lightest smile curving at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were once again a transparent blue instead of a gloomy black, and the relief in Philippe's heart almost matched the relief of his body. He stood upon shaking legs, and they walked to their horses, mounted, and rode back to the palace in utter silence. A silence Philippe thought was companionable, comfortable - the silence of two men who had learned everything unspoken between them. But as they reached the palace's interior and the King strode off without a word Philippe wondered whether the feeling of companionship was, as it had always been with his brother, entirely unreciprocated. Whether Louis's silence was one of unbounded regret, and Philippe simply heard it through the gauze of his own satisfaction, he suddenly could not know. 

"Brother -" he said, attempting to follow Louis into his chambers, but the axe blades of the King's guard crossed suddenly before his face, and Louis continued walking, without raising so much as a hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Philippe reportedly actually made the "fucked more women than beads on your rosary" crack when Louis's staunch displays of Catholicism lead to him continually critiquing his brother's sexual exploits.


	11. The Fall of Rome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe reflects on his union with Henriette.

Philippe locked himself away in his room, and he remembered. Some memories were vivid, with hard lines like etchings, and some were blurred watercolours, with decades softly melting into liquid decades.

Throughout every image, every sketch, every watercolour, whether in the background or the foreground, there was Henriette, and there was Louis.

Henriette had come to them as an infant. His aunt, her mother, the wife of the King of England, had taken refuge in the palace when Louis was still a little boy, and Philippe still dressed as a little girl. Philippe had always loved his aunt. She was a bright, brilliant peacock's feather in his world of dull games and duller lessons, and more than that, she clearly favoured him in a world designed to favour his brother.

"You are the prettiest creature in the world," she would whisper in his ear as he sat upon her lap, feeling the bustle of her skirts beneath him. Louis would be playing at their feet (he was not even aware that her attention was not his alone, utterly ignorant to the idea of oversight), and yet she would stroke Philippe's hair, and sneak him sweets, and bring him gifts - fine laces and soaps from England, and tiny paintings done by her own hand. The smallest miniatures, usually of eyes - his eyes. Blue eyes with thick lashes staring out from cameos.

And then Henriette came, in a bundle of that English lace, and Madame placed her in his arms. "You are to be fine friends," she had smiled, and she had smelled of lavender and coconut dusting, and the baby smelled fresh and new, the newest thing in the whole palace, amongst all the ancientness and grandeur, she was so very, very new. "And _you_ ," she had smiled, leaning forward to kiss his marble brow over the baby's wriggling body, "are still my pretty."

Louis, of course, had not showed an interest until he was old enough to show an interest. He cared little for babies. But to Philippe she was something exotic, something foreign, so utterly unfamiliar, so gentle, so harmless. Even as a child, hidden from the corruption of court that was to dominate his adult life, he knew there was something precious in her innocence.

She had seem so small then. She had seemed so small always. The notion of her smallness travelling alone across the seas caved in his tender heart.

He remembered the last time she had travelled to the white cliffs of that tiny island. When her sister was ill with the smallpox, and she had written to him to complain of the weather and the light. She said the light was different in England. Silver and grey, where Paris was burnished gold. She said Paris was her home and and a part of Philippe had wondered and hoped that he was a part of that sense of home, that he would be her burnished gold. She said she felt no love for England, but she felt love for her sister. Henriette would write him pages upon pages, full of the intimacies of friendship and tiny sketches of her every day life, and yet when her sister died he received just a line, just a note, encapsulating a pain he couldn't imagine. To lose Louis would be to lose the very breath in his lungs.

And that was when the court proposed. The anger of it simmered beneath his skin like boiling, bubbling water. The injustice, the humiliation, the shame, and the lack of sensitivity.

"Her sister is dead! On Christmas eve!" he had roared at his brother, and Louis remained stoic at his blue velvet table, his quill moving smoothly across some bill or policy that was probably going to ruin someone's life somewhere.

"Indeed. And it is more important than ever so cement our relationship with he English by merging our family with theirs," Louis said monotonously, without even looking up from his papers. Philippe spluttered, taking a hesitant step forwards.

"Merging our family with theirs? She is our family. As was her sister. Do you remember our cousin Mary? Do you even remember Henriette, or is she so far out of sight that she is out of mind?"

Louis raised a brow at his script, but Philippe noted his fingers tighten on his quill. "Henriette's best interests are forever in my heart. There is no one to whom I would rather entrust my brother's heart. And there is no one to whom I would rather entrust hers," he said slowly, his eyes meeting Phillippe's. "There is simply no one else I trust to put up with your... idiosyncrasies, brother."

Philippe scoffed, "Because she knows who I am. Because we were raised together. She is as much blood to me as you are. Which is why this entire arrangement is obnoxious and unnecessary and designed to - what? Keep me in line? Are you asking her to spy upon me, brother?" he narrowed his eyes. "You may have won her loyalty in her bedroom but she will forever be my friend."

"She will forever be your wife," Louis corrected quickly. "For the sake of France, and for our special relationship with our island neighbours."

Philippe was quiet for a moment, the muscles in his jaws working around the bones until they ached. "You would have me marry for politics, rather than love?" he asked softly.

"Under our God and state you will never be able to marry someone you are capable of loving," Louis countered pointedly.

"And yet it won't stop me loving them. _Men. Boys_. Say it, brother. Honestly, _'them'_. How dare you judge me so harshly when you are too cowardly to let the words touch upon your lips. No. You have demonstrated expertly that one needn't reserve one's sheets for one's wife."

Louis sighed slowly through his teeth and readdressed his attention to his paperwork, as if Philippe's mere occupation of space was an irritant to him. "You would not risk Henriette's happiness for your sodomite frivolities."

A bark of laughter tore from Philippe's throat. "Is that what you are hoping? That my loyalty to her is so great that I will change my bastard ways? Become the pinnacle of husbandly and brotherly duty? Are you using her to keep me in line? Is that all she is to you, a prison guard for your wayward disappointment of a brother?"

"She is a tonic for a sickness," Louis replied simply.

Philippe spun on his heel and left the room with the sinking, gut feeling that his life, and his two most significant relationships, had been irreparably altered.

\---

Philippe remembered the celebrations of their wedding - because there could not be just one. Louis's political manoeuvres demanded a global stage. Philippe could not remember if it were the third or fourth mammoth celebration through the haze of wine that had coated his tongue since the day of their wedding. To avoid their marriage bed he spent his hours in drawing rooms surrounded by squawking women and beautiful boys who topped up his glass, who numbed him to the horror of his reality. He knew, at some point, he would be forced to consummate his marriage, to bed his oldest friend, to imagine someone else's face as he forced hers into a feathered pillow. The idea made him feel ill to his stomach, more ill even than the bile mixing with thick liquor. He stood in his dressing chamber alone, having sent his servants away. His hand shook as he decanted more wine into a glass, and his heart beat in his throat. He stared into his dressing mirror and did not recognise the pale, drawn face that shone out at him.

"You are not dressed," said a soft voice from behind him, and he started as he saw his brother's reflection behind his own.

"I am," Philippe countered, gesturing at his cuffs, "Just not how you wish for me to be dressed."

Louis's brow furrowed in mild mannered confusion as he moved to pull the fine robes he had designed from Philippe's bed. "Do you not wish to wear these? They are exceedingly fine." Louis himself was decked out in a fine Roman tunic, dozens of folds and layers of fine silk clutching about the hard lines of his body, looking ready to take his place in the Pantheon of lesser gods.

Philippe rolled his eyes towards the heavens, "Fine costumes for your performance, réalisateur, but I'm afraid it's time for me to retire from the stage," he said drolly, pouring the wine down his throat as though his body were bottomless. Philippe reached a shaking hand towards the decanter only to be stopped by his brother's bejewelled fingers.

"You have never been averse to performing before," Louis said softly, taking the glass from Philippe's hand and dropping it to his dressing table.

"Plays of my own design."

"And the court's design, society's design, our mother's design, the Chevalier's design, the Comte de Guiche's design..."

Philippe narrowed his eyes. "And you wish to know why your design is any different?"

"It is a party," Louis said simply. "Not a design. A celebration of your love."

Philippe snorted through his nose and reached again for his wine, but this time Louis's fingers were hard on the inside of his wrist, and his brother shook his head slowly as he pointedly dropped Philippe's arm by his side. "A celebration of the long friendship between our family and Henriette's, then, if you would rather see it like that."

"If anything it's more of a wake."

Louis's lips twitched, and he stepped forward to begin unbuttoning Philippe's cuffs. Philippe remained stood, a petulant child staring off into space as his brother undressed him.

"A wake, then, to announce the death of Louis and Philippe, and the birth of the King of the Romans and the King of Persia. Brothers, enemies, rulers, warlords," Louis smiled, his voice soft and his breath warm on Philippe's cheek as he worked on the buttons of his collars. Philippe felt like a child being placated with promises of games of war, and raised his eyebrows at his brother. "Myself clad in the tunics of ancient Gods, yourself in the finest silks of Asia, before all the ladies of the court." Philippe raised an eyebrow so swiftly that it forced a chuckle from Louis's throat as he opened his shirt and pushed it from Philippe's stiff, unapologetic shoulders. "And," he added, grabbing the ornate robe from the bed and draping it across his brother's shoulders, leaning close into his face, "There will be wine."

"I have wine here," Philippe replied sullenly.

"And," Louis said again, as he worked the fastenings on the robe closed, hands moving over elaborate ornamentation of silver and gold brocade, "There may be boys acting as ladies of the court."

"Are you manipulating me with sex, brother?"

Louis's small smile broke into a glittering, devilish grin.

"Always."

And so they emerged at the Carrousel du Louvre, arm in arm, their hair twin sets of luxurious raven curls, their faces powdered, their lips red, the King of Persia and the King of the Romans parading through the court as emblems of power, empire, and beauty.

"You do know the Romans fell, do you not?" Philippe murmured from the corner of his mouth as they sashayed through the writhing, pulsing masses of excited bodies, as all around them glittered, and the smell of food and wine saturated the hall.

Louis refused to answer, instead smirking and waving, a pinnacle of authority.

"Yet the Persians... I believe the Safavid dynasty are doing quite well..."

Louis's fingers dug into his bicep, and Philippe laughed softly to himself, only for the smile to fall from his lips as he saw his wife - though not yet by the law of consummation - dressed as an Egyptian queen at the head of the table. She blushed as she saw them both, and lowered her thickly lined eyes to the ground.

How long could his brother continue to make him briefly forget the torture of his union?

Philippe came back to himself in his bedroom, splayed out upon his sheets, still fully dressed in the same dirtied clothes he had worn atop the hill with his brother. A small miniature was clasped in his fingers, a tiny but detailed painting of a pair of blue eyes. He had always assumed they were his own, but as he looked into them he realised they could easily be the eyes of his brother, as similar as they were. He knew his brother's eyes better than his own. He now knew what they looked like full of heat, full of lust, full of sex. He knew what it was to look into those eyes at the pinnacle of orgasm, and what it was to be rejected by them.

The same eyes that had given him a wife (he thought she would be torture but she turned out to be such joy) had come to take her away, to the white cliffs of Dover, to the land of lace and soap, and he was not a King of Persia at all, but a Duke, and an impotent one at that.


	12. A Little Brown Bear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe resorts to dramatics to get his brother's attention.

The Madame de Montespan had a menagerie. A petting zoo of her own design, filled with exotic creatures, a glowing gift from the King (not, however, the most elaborate gift he had ever bestowed, though that's a story for another day). The fences were gold, and the animals ate veal and grapes. They, themselves, were not for eating. They were beloved, and Montespan could often be found feeding tiny baby goats macaroons from the hand - sweets that cost more per pastel round than the gardener tending to the goats' lawns made in a week.

The petting zoo contained goats (she bathed her face in their still-warm milk), rabbits with fuzzed tails, guinea pigs, horses (separate from those in the stables opposite the palace - these horses were not for riding), peacocks, snuffling black piglets, parrots filling an aviary with their jewelled wings, and... a bear.

At least, it once contained a bear.

But the bear was missing. 

And so was its leash.

 

\---

 

Louis marched towards his cabinet room, flanked by a wide cloak of guards, only to be halted by Bontemps' worried face. His manservant stood before the closed doors of his chamber, worrying at his lower lip, and his eyes looked haunted. A haunting thing in itself, for those eyes had seen, and knew, much.

"What is the meaning of this?" Louis asked sharply. His head hurt, his stomach was clenched, and every line in his face articulately expressed that he did not have the patience for any disruption to his daily routine.

"My King -" Bontemps started, only to be interrupted by a massive crash and the shouts of men. 

"My King -" And this time it was one of the women of Madame de Montespan, rushing upon them, her heels clicking down the hallways, her skirts hitched. She was breathless, her face flushed, but Louis ignored them both. Pushing past Bontemps, he threw open the doors to his cabinet chamber, and learned that even the sun could be shocked. 

They had found the bear.

Three terrified guards held their spears aloft as the small brown bear reared up on its back paws, backed into a corner of the suite. Blue velvet curtains hung in scraps from the windows, the table had been overturned, papers lay scattered, and the legs of Louis's own stool lay with splintered legs. A desolate roar rattled his ears before Bontemps' hands were on him, dragging him back, the doors slammed before his face, as though he had just had some glimpse of some surreal panorama, a bizarre oracular spectacular that had no place (and yet it did - Versailles was founded upon the eccentric and absurd) in his working life.

Blood rushed to the King's face as he threw the hands of his guards off of him, and spun on the terrified, quivering girl, a scream stuck in her throat.

"I feel somewhat as though my generosity has been flung in my face," he said, his voice low and measured but his eyes blazing. She made to open her small rosebud of a mouth, but was again interrupted.

"I always said you should stick to smaller gifts," said Philippe, and Louis hadn't even realised his brother was stood in the same corridor, leaning nonchalantly against the wall. A diamante leash was wrapped around his fist. "Something more intimate and thoughtful. Less flashy. Less... teeth." Philippe bared his own shining white canines, spinning the end of the leash like a lasso. Louis looked like he was choking on the realisation of his brother's actions, or perhaps he was choking on the nonchalance with which he delivered them. Philippe always knew that his tantrums and rages never got through to his brother - but Louis always hated the blasé.

"Do I have your attention now? Maybe we can finally talk. And don't tell me you have work, as it's rather clear your office is... occupied." Philippe's voice was soft and dangerous and yet rung clear as a bell above the muffled crashing and growling of Louis's chamber. 

"What is the meaning of this?" Bontemps spluttered, but Louis held up a hand, silencing Bontemps as he made to move towards his antechamber. The guards flurried into action to follow him but he dismissed them too. 

"But an attempt has been made upon your life," Bontempts argued, and Louis grimaced.

"No, Bontemps, merely upon my sanity." He flashed Philippe a dangerous glare and beckoned him to follow into the antechamber, slamming the doors behind him without a touch of Kingly grace.

Philippe slumped easily into one of the plush emerald armchairs, smoothing the leash across his lap like a cat's tail.

"Finally," he sighed, a twitch of amusement dancing across his lips as he watched Louis slowly clench and unclench his fists. "A moment alone. How long has it been?" Philippe's mouth set into a grimace. "No, don't answer that, I think I know. Three weeks, and four days. I've had time to count, you see. What with having lost my lover, my child, my wife, and my brother's ear."

"And your mind, it seems," Louis hissed out slowly, seeming to have composed himself enough to edge the words passed his clenched teeth.

"That too, yes. War does that to a man. Not sure what your excuse is though," Philippe replied casually, bouncing up to his feet and striding towards his brother. "Perhaps it's all the little domestic wars of your own creation. All the fights you start yourself, the arguments you cause." Philippe paused, and refused to allow the majestic weight of standing before his brother after having been occluded for so long to prevent him from saying what he wished to say. "All the tiny battles... All the wrestling matches atop hills..."

Louis's eyes glinted, and his body made to move away, but Philippe grabbed his arm and yanked him suddenly forward with a brute strength. 

"You got your lover back," Louis said defensively.

"Yes. To placate me."

"You think I gave you him to replace Henriette?"

"No. Because you did not just take my wife, did you, brother?" Philippe said, his voice suddenly so quiet it seemed to fall beneath their heartbeats, "You took my station. Any tiny scrap of power I may be allowed to have. You know that mission should have been mine. You know only I should be able to speak on your behalf, to protect your interests, as I did on the battlefield -"

"A diplomatic meeting is not a battlefield, Philippe," Louis retorted in exasperation.

"No, but like a battlefield it requires bravery, intelligence, cunning. Imagination. Perhaps a dash of ingenuity... you did see the bear, didn't you?"

"Couldn't miss it. Next time you throw a toy from your pram please make sure it's smaller. Or at least less angry."

"This is if I have any toys left, by the time you're done with me," Philippe replied, sighing and dropping back down into his seat, content that Louis wouldn't storm from the room. "And by toys I mean... hope. Purpose." He lifted his eyes to Louis. "Just add those to the list of things I've lost. Though lost isn't the right word, is it? The bear is not lost. The bear was taken." Philippe felt as though he were rambling. He felt breathless as the adrenaline of taking action began to wear from his bones and apathy and lethargy was left in its place. The same exhaustion that had dominated his waking life began to pin his body to his seat, and he appeared to deflate, like a gutted animal. "What will I have left, Louis?" he asked, a rare instance of his brother's name on his tongue (as his tongue had been on his tongue, his mouth, the smooth marble line of his neck).

Louis looked profoundly uncomfortable, and small without the flank of guards he had used to keep distance between himself and his brother for nearly a month. It had been so long since Philippe had seen him up this close, and there was so much he wanted to say, but he found he lacked the breath to say it. Like there was not enough time in the world in which to fully express the suffering Louis had caused him with each second of increased distance between them, each new theft, new slight, against his capacity as a leader, his authority, his capability, and his worth as a brother. Philippe hoped this would be enough. Just some moment of connection, some conversation, a moment of exchange to make him feel less like he was screaming into the abyss, roaring into the hollow lake the soldiers of Versailles were diligently digging. The silence stretched on, and Philippe watched Louis's eyes slip to the floor and his body heave as he took a breath to compose himself. Louis had been an angry child, and Philippe remembered their governess teaching him to breathe.

"I have an empire to rule, protect, and expand," Louis said slowly. "The lives of countless in my care. A history to defend, a future to carve. Your... _hysterics_ are low on my roster of concerns."

Philippe's face stung with a sudden hot shame, as though he had been slapped. He raised himself to his feet and moved towards his brother, and their breath shook between them with the weight of two men desperately trying to maintain some semblance of control in an insane world. "I -" Philippe started, but his voice cracked, struggling passed the lump swelling within his throat, "I am not some mistress you can throw aside once you are done." 

A devastated smile, one of sad realisation, pulled at the corner of Louis's mouth. "Ah. Of course. You are indignant, brother." Louis shook his head slowly. "I have not hurt your heart. I have hurt your ego. Everything you have lost - the Chevalier, Henriette, your child - it is not a dent to your spirit, your soul. It is a brush to your pride and a challenge to your authority." Louis's voice was sour, and a disgust and disappointment flashed through his eyes. Philippe laughed a soft, sad, lilting laugh, and suddenly pressed his forehead against Louis's, his eyes squeezed tight.

"My King," he said softly, wrapping the sparkling leash around the back of Louis's neck and using it to pull him closer, the loose ends clasped tight in his white-knuckled fists.

"I'm afraid there is not a heart left to hurt in the entirety of this palace."

\---

The Queen lay curled on her side, dosing in and out of consciousness, when the weight of her husband stirred her back to the waking world. She knew better than to comment on his presence, as though trying not to startle a wild animal, and instead she opened her arms to him and let him collapse into her chest, resting his fine head upon her breast.

"What worries you, my King?" she whispered into the darkness, stroking long fingers through his long hair.

"My brother set a bear on my palace."

She sighed, and wished it was the strangest thing that had ever happened to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Montespan did have a menagerie of exotic animals, including a bear, and she once did set the bear on the chambers of a beauty of the court who she thought was challenging her for Louis's affections. As far as I know Philippe never set a bear on anyone, but I wouldn't put it past him.


End file.
